19 Purchase Street

CHAPTER ONE

THIS delivery.

He had made it twice every week since the weather had allowed.

Thirty-two times counting this time, so, by now, at practically any point along the way he knew how much farther he had to go.

A hand-painted municipal sign hung over the edge of the road said Town of Harrison 1696 in Colonial-style lettering, and up ahead coming into sight was the final intersection where Anderson Hill crossed Purchase Street. In his mind that marked three-quarters of a mile exactly to Number 19.

He was tempted to pedal faster, to get there and have it done with again. But hurry would be out of character, he knew. Better that he keep on at the typical indolent pace.

If needed, he had proof for the name Tyrone Wilson and could give a White Plains address.

Grocery deliverer. Nothing more than that from the looks of him. He wore a gray work-out jersey with its sleeves ripped off at the armhole seams. A white handkerchief tied for a sweatband around his head. High-top sneakers with most of their canvas sections cut out, exposing his bare feet. Trousers bound by twine in place of bicycle clips.

Also, in keeping, a two hundred dollar portable cassette player was up on his left shoulder. Matte black, serious-looking stereo with numerous indicators and switches. The volume of it was turned all the way up so he couldn’t hear anything but Donna Summer. His left hand kept her balanced close to his ear while his other hand steered.

It wasn’t truly a bicycle he was riding. It had three wheels, two in front. A shop at Yonkers made and serviced delivery bikes of this sort for Gristede’s, Grand Union and other grocery markets. Between its two front wheels a specially constructed frame provided support for a welded metal compartment about two feet by three feet and thirty inches deep. To contain the groceries. It had a hinged lid held closed by a hasp and a padlock. Ordinarily, for such a purpose an inexpensive lightweight padlock would have been sufficient, just enough to keep anyone from getting easily into it whenever the bike was left unattended. However, the compartment on this bike of Tyrone Wilson’s was protected by an unpickable American HT-15 padlock with case-hardened shackle and body.

By now he had reached the intersection, was stopped alone there with second thoughts about having obeyed the traffic light. A minor thing, but it would have been more natural if he’d gone on through the red. To cover himself he placed his feet up on the handlebars and brought the cassette player down to rest on his thighs. He popped Donna Summer out and was turning her over when a car pulled up close beside him. Too close considering the width of the road there.

Wilson pretended not to notice.

The car’s window lowered.

Wilson’s hand went up in under his jersey, ostensibly to scratch his chest. At the same time he glanced at the car, took it all in. Brown Buick. One person. Man in a gray suit. Thin-haired man wearing rimless eyeglasses. Average looking, as, of course, he would be.

Wilson slowly rolled his head back, looked up at the traffic light. Long goddamn light.

How do I get to Old Lake Street? the man asked.

Wilson’s immediate thought was to not answer, act as though he hadn’t heard, turn up Donna Summer. He didn’t know any Old Lake Street, although as a delivery boy he should. He relaxed his eyelids, took all the quickness from his eyes before turning his head to the man, right at him. He hardly moved his tongue or lips so as to have his words come out appropriately sluggish. Said Old Lake was two lights down that way and three blocks over, and the man believed him.

The light had already changed.

The Buick pulled away.

Wilson brought his hand out from beneath his jersey, put Donna Summer back upon his shoulder and began pedaling again, going north on Purchase Street, bound for Number 19.

It was the last of July, and so hot the asphalt had gone gummy. Even along those stretches where the branches of maples vaulted and shaded the way. The houses, especially those set back from the street, seemed to be cowering. Insects were moved to transmit what sounded like a sizzle, as though underscoring the temperature.

A similar sibilance was in Mary Beth Pullman’s ears, even though she was entirely enclosed in her Chrysler sedan. Headed down the drive of Old Oaks Country Club.

For some reason the steering wheel felt thick in her hands and the windshield glass appeared somewhat fogged. Mary Beth gave the blame to the two gin and tonics she’d had on top of lunch. She wouldn’t have indulged if Alice Woodson’s husband hadn’t sat and talked. Nor would she have eaten such a heavy meal, chicken a la king in a pastry shell and all that, if she hadn’t worked up to it—played twenty-seven holes, taking advantage of there being practically no one on the course because of the heat.

Mary Beth often played in the cold or the rain for that same reason: not to have anyone snickering at the way her swing was more of a chop at the ball because her shoulders and upper arms were so fat. She weighed at least sixty over. If she lost forty she’d be just average heavy and, then, if she were four inches taller and larger boned she’d be able to carry it off. But as she was … No matter, she believed she enjoyed golf, would not give it up as long as she was able to tee up a ball. Several times she had sunk incredible putts.

She power-steered the Chrysler down the easy grade and around the turn that ran between the permanent caddies’ living quarters and the sixteenth fairway. Normally, there were two or three off-duty caddies relaxing on the steps but evidently today was too hot for them. Also, Mary Beth noticed, the sixteenth was deserted. That made her feel superior. She’d played the long uphill sixteenth twice that day and had broken ladies’ par both times. Her only regret was she’d worn a skirt instead of culottes, had thought a skirt would be cooler. All that walking and perspiring. The insides of her thighs were chafed raw from rubbing together.

The country club drive became a straightaway that ran between two dozen high-trunked trees, spaced evenly apart like an honor guard, leading to a pair of identical imposing gatehouses. Beyond lay Purchase Street.

At that moment it occurred to Mary Beth that something was wrong. With her. Then she realized what it was.

She had no special knowledge of anatomy, knew practically nothing about the intricacies of her physical system. Yet, in that fraction of time, either in complaint or warning or explanation, her brain transmitted what was happening to it.

What was happening was that the occipital artery had dialated. Two centimeters above where it passed across the internal carotid artery. When Mary Beth was finishing her second after-lunch gin and tonic, holding an ice cube in her mouth and ejecting it back into the empty glass, a tiny bubble had formed on the arterial wall. The layer of muscle tissue there was less than half normal thickness in the first place, and the heat of the day, the twenty-seven holes and the food and alcohol had caused her bloodstream to put a strain on that weak spot.

The linings of the artery were not intended to take such pressure. Nor could it be expected that the outer connective tissue would withstand it, although those muscle fibers did try to hold, bulged until they were nearly unmeasurably thin.

Now, they ruptured.

Blood escaped from its course.

The hemorrhage was massive. At once it invaded the surrounding areas, congested the cerebellum, crammed the tenth cranial nerve.

Mary Beth’s head snapped back as though she’d been uppercutted. Her cheeks puffed and her face became intense red, going to purple. Breaths like short snores came from her. Her eyes went wide, the black pupils dilated to the circumference of the irises.

Her legs stiffened, locked at the knees. Her right food jammed down the accelerator pedal.

TYRONE Wilson on the grocery delivery bike had no chance. No time to get out of the way even if he’d seen it coming. The Chrysler was like a three thousand pound metal bull charging at seventy-some miles an hour out of the gateway of Old Oaks. Caught Wilson and the bike flush, smashed against Wilson’s left side. Tore all the left leg from him and heaved the rest of him up and thirty feet off to one side of Purchase Street. He landed on the back of his neck. Had it been the only sound at that moment, the fracture would have been clearly heard.

The Chrysler continued across Purchase at full speed, shot off the shoulder and over the ditch and slammed into the embankment. Front end up, rear wheels spinning, it bucked and tried to climb the slope. Its tires ate at the grass and topsoil, dug until its underparts were jammed in.

The first officials to arrive at the scene were two state troopers. They saw immediately that Wilson was dead, searched him for identification, found it in his damp worn wallet. Also beneath his gray jersey they found a .32 caliber revolver in a shoulder holster harnessed next to his bare skin. It didn’t surprise them. Wilson was a black.

One of the troopers hurried to the Chrysler and found no life in Mary Beth. With the car nosed up so steeply she was practically horizontal, her pelvis pressed up hard against the steering wheel. The car’s engine was still racing. The trooper turned it off.

By the time the Harrison town police arrived the troopers had the collision accurately interpreted. No tire marks. The mangled delivery bike. The final position of the Chrysler. An accidental death caused by a natural death was the conclusion.

It didn’t cause much of a traffic tie-up, and surely there would have been more spectators if it hadn’t been for the heat. Among the few who hung around were three boys of ten. They stood off to the side near as anyone to Wilson’s contorted one-legged corpse. They didn’t try to conceal their fascination. It was their first exposure to genuine death. Blood looked different, they thought, more oily, on black skin. Each of the boys privately expected to see a wispy, transparent likeness rise from Wilson and probably float straight up. They remained silent until a trooper covered the body.

Another siren.

An ambulance. On its way at unavailing high speed, taking futile chances. When it arrived Mary Beth was removed. It wasn’t a matter of just opening the car door and lifting her out. The deadweight bulk of her was rigidly wedged against the steering wheel. The steering wheel had to be cut away, her grip pried from it before she could be transferred onto a stretcher. She was strapped on and covered entirely with a fresh sheet.

Yellow chalk was used to outline the position of Wilson, his severed leg and the delivery bike. Then Wilson and the leg were put into a bloodproof body bag and the bike was moved to the side of the road.

When the ambulance went off with the dead, nothing that remained was interesting enough to hold the spectators. Traffic began to pass at nearly normal speed. The state troopers left, and so did all but two of the local police.

Officers Lyle and McCatty.

They were to wait for the wrecker. They were also to make up the report.

McCatty, who was in his forties, had a stripe. He’d been on the Harrison force for five years, which was not enough seniority to take him out of range of any deep cutback. Lyle was new and much younger, had in less than a year’s duty and, if all went as he hoped, no more than a year to go. He never let anyone, not even McCatty, know what he really wanted and had been saving for was a ski and tennis equipment shop.

Lyle took measurements and diagrammed the accident in the proper space on a report sheet. McCatty, meanwhile, nosed around the Chrysler. He knew they had taken Mary Beth’s purse along with her. As though she’d need it. He tried the glove compartment, removed the key from the ignition to get into it. There was nothing in there worth having, and the only thing in the trunk was a wool blanket that appeared good but when McCatty held it up, he saw it had several moth holes. He tossed it back in and shut the trunk lid hard. Seemed there’d be no dividends this time.

The delivery bike.

It was so badly smashed it looked like a John Chamberlain sculpting at the Whitney. That would have been his wife’s thought, not his. The frame of it was split, nearly folded in two, and all three of its wheels were bent lopsided oval. However, its metal compartment was intact. That thirty-inch-deep carrying box was dented and more scarred than before but its seams had held.

McCatty examined the compartment and its formidable padlock. He got a steel T-bar from the patrol car.

He worked on the hasp, jammed the T-bar in along the edge where the hasp was attached and got under enough to pry. He applied steady pressure with all his might. Finally the hasp snapped away.

McCatty opened the lid and saw the compartment contained two cardboard cartons of groceries. There wasn’t a customer’s name or an address on them. The cartons were so well packed only a few of the items on the very top had been knocked about by the collision. McCatty noticed the stamped price sticker on a small package of wild rice that said $4.95 and a jar of Tiptree peach preserves imported from England for $3.80. Anyway, not just Wonder bread and Ivory Snow. He transferred the cartons to the back seat of the patrol car. No one would ever know or ask. Besides, the bike could just as well have been returning from a delivery rather than making one.

The wrecker arrived.

The Chrysler was pulled to the road and hoisted into position. The delivery bike was thrown like a piece of junk onto the bed of the truck where it was secured to the hoist.

That part of it done, McCatty and Lyle drove off in the patrol car. It wasn’t much out of their way to stop and leave one carton of groceries at McCatty’s, the other at Lyle’s. When they got to headquarters they went right to work on the official paperwork. McCatty disliked typing and Lyle wasn’t good at it, an unsure, pecking typist who misspelled, X’d out too much and often omitted details important enough to get hell for later. With Lyle at the keys the report would take at least an hour.

They were ten minutes into it when McCatty’s wife Connie called. She’d just gotten home. McCatty told her he was off duty but had the report to do. She wanted him home now, insisted. That wasn’t like her, McCatty thought. Ordinarily she just lived with his hours. Also, there seemed to be something else to her tone, as though just below her words was something exciting that she couldn’t come straight out with. It occurred to McCatty that it might be some sexual thing, a little specialty she’d decided to open up to and was impatient about. They’d enjoyed some of that not too long ago, and, he thought, this had the same ring to it. She kept insisting.

McCatty pulled the unfinished report from the typewriter and signed it in advance.

When he arrived home, the back door was locked. Connie had to let him in. She was in her stocking feet and her dark and gray hair looked as though her hands had been running through it. Her lipstick was nearly chewed away. Not a sexy sight. McCatty was disappointed enough to get grouchy.

The kitchen shades were drawn for some reason, so a light was on over the island counter. It shined down on the carton of groceries McCatty had placed there earlier.

Connie asked if the groceries were theirs.

Yes.

From where?

He told her.

She had unpacked and packed the carton a half dozen times since she’d come home. Now she had him do it.

Even before he had everything out and on the counter he realized the false bottom. Not elaborate, merely a piece of similar brown cardboard cut to size and dropped in. He removed it.

Hundred dollar bills.

Bound by wide rubber bands into packets, about two inches thick.

Twenty such packets layered the entire bottom of the carton.

Connie had hardly touched the money, only enough to prove her eyes weren’t lying.

McCatty didn’t react to it. He removed one of the packets, sort of weighed it in his hand and riffled through it.

Connie asked how much.

A million was his estimate.

It’s ours, Connie said

McCatty put the packet of hundreds back into place in the carton.

It’s ours, Connie repeated emphatically.

McCatty looked away as though to get her out of mind. After a long, thoughtful moment, he covered the money with the piece of cardboard and began repacking the groceries neatly.

What are you going to do?

McCatty didn’t reply. He picked up the carton and went out to the car. Connie followed. She called him an asshole, a straight stupid cop asshole and she made a couple of tries for the carton.

He drove away with it, left Connie standing there yelling.

It wasn’t far to Lyle’s place. McCatty figured he had time, Lyle would still be at headquarters making out the report. There was no one else to be concerned about because Lyle lived alone.

McCatty broke in. Wrapped his fist in a rag and put it through a pane of Lyle’s back door. The other carton of groceries was just inside. McCatty nearly stumbled over it. Rather than unpack it, he ran his hand flat down the inner side of the carton, felt it too had a false bottom. In under that layer of cardboard he fingered the unmistakable texture of paper that was money. He took the carton with him, placed it in the rear seat next to the first.

For a long while he just drove anywhere with the two million dollars. Killing time until night. Then he was on Purchase Street. Twice he went by the place, checking it out. He slowed to let two cars pass. When there were no cars coming in either direction he pulled into the drive of Number 19 and stopped before its huge outer gate.

He placed the two cartons in the shrubs to the left of the gate, where, from the gatehouse, they’d surely be noticed and taken in.

CHAPTER TWO

NORMA Gainer was also in Harrison on that last of July.

She came down the drive of Number 19 and the heavy iron gates anticipated her, opened automatically one after another. Norma took it as a minor but important demonstration of acceptance that usually she could leave the place without even having to hesitate at the gates. It wasn’t known, of course, that she was affected by such reassurances.

This time the man on gate duty signaled her to a stop. He informed her there was an accident down the way on Purchase Street.

Bad? Norma asked.

From what I hear.

Norma didn’t realize, of course, that she was circumstantially linked to the accident, that she and one of the victims, the dead grocery boy, had so much in common. Norma had never met another carrier. At least not that she knew of. And as far as the way Number 19 worked such things, she’d taken her brother Drew’s advice and stifled her curiosity long ago.

She continued on out through the gates to Purchase Street, turned right. After a quarter mile she got onto Route 684 and its wide lanes that were like an undeniable chute to the Hutchinson River Parkway city bound. She had the top down on the Fiat 2000 Spyder, creating her own breeze. Strands of her hair, like tiny whips, snapped her cheeks and forehead.

There was hardly any traffic, however she kept to the far right lane with the speedometer at fifty-five, exactly the posted limit. Westchester County police patrolled in unmarked cars and used radar guns. Norma didn’t want to get stopped. The piece of luggage was right there on the seat beside her.

She wouldn’t think about it, passed the time with trying to put out of her mind all else except what she considered her blessings. Before long, there was the George Washington Bridge, its blue lines softened by unclear air, and in less than a quarter hour Norma turned onto East Forty-ninth Street, parked in the garage across from the United Nations Plaza. She took the suitcase up to her apartment in that building.

All the apartments that faced south had unobstructed downstream views of the East River. The United Nations building was practically in their front yard. Naturally, they were choice, most expensive. Norma’s apartment had north and east exposures, nearly no skyline and only an oblique, somewhat restricted view of the river. Still it was in the four hundred thousand class. Being on the twenty-seventh floor gave it premium, that much out of range of the city’s true surface.

Five rooms. Done mainly with furniture and accessories she’d found in Europe. Almost every trip over she had something sent back. Such as the calling card tray on the table in the foyer. A bronze of a girl in dishabillé, her arms extended to support an oversized scallop shell. Norma had come upon it five trips ago in Paris at the Marche aux Puces. She’d paid the very first asking price for it because she liked it so much, and after the transaction the stallkeeper, in a rare moment of candor, had told her she should have bargained. The foyer table itself she’d found in Amsterdam at an unlikely out-of-the-way shop that bought piece by piece from elderly people in its neighborhood. Norma believed that table with its graceful tapered legs and marquetry top had been most reluctantly exchanged by someone for mere subsistence.

In such manner she enjoyed personal connections to those things around her. It helped take some of the edge off living alone.

Now in her kitchen she poured a Perrier over ice, added a bit of Rose’s lime juice and watched the swirl of the lime until she stirred it away with a long sterling silver spoon that could also be sipped through. She drew some into her mouth on her way to the bedroom.

There she sat in the chair she most often sat in, settled and let out a breath that was inadvertently a sigh. Everything here was in place, she thought, even every magazine. It would be exciting if someone, a certain someone, would suddenly appear and cause disarray. Wasn’t it strange when she was with that person she could even let her clothes drop off just anywhere and not be bothered by it?

Her thought went to tomorrow and then the day after tomorrow, her birthday. Thursday she’d be thirty-eight, which on the chronological see-saw between thirty-five and forty was an altogether different balance. Norma, thirty-eight. It seemed the older she got the more she felt the name Norma suited her, as though time was on a convergent course with a predestined image. Futile to hope the two would never merge, she thought.

To her rescue came the desire to be elsewhere. At first anywhere else and then a particular place, because at that moment she needed to be kissed. Not just the light pressing of lips but rather her mouth crowded by another tongue in it, an identical part stroking, becoming resolute and extended within her to its limit, wanting to surpass that, stretching inward until the little ligaments beneath the tongue ached, stabbing as though furious at the impossibility of filling her, and taking persistent licks at the tiny sideways crotches of her lips, left and right.

Norma’s eyes had closed involuntarily. She opened them but required movement to come almost all the way out of it. She took up a hand mirror from the side table, a silver art nouveau one etched with dragonflies and lily spears. Not intending serious self-appraisal. She glanced at her reflection only long enough to verify it.

She was a handsome woman, strikingly close to beautiful. Her features were definite and pleasingly related, although her mouth had a way of normally being a little too set and at times when the situation warranted her eyes could be so steady it seemed they might never blink. The pupils of her eyes were an extraordinary green, with black outlining circumferences. Her hair was dark brown, healthy, heavy hair that was naturally straight. She often wore it pulled back taut without a part, playing right into the impression of composure.

The drink in her hand felt colder than it should have. Rivulets of condensation ran down to her fingers. Using the back of the newest issue of Geo magazine for a coaster, she placed the glass on the table and took up the phone. All day it had been on her mind to call Drew but she hadn’t wanted to call from Number 19. She suspected every phone conversation to or from there was somehow recorded, and although anything said to Drew would be personal, who knew what might be made of it. Her own phone was swept weekly by the Number 19 people. A requirement rather than a favor.

She dialed Drew’s number.

After four rings his service answered. Norma knew that didn’t necessarily mean Drew wasn’t home. She left word she’d called, no other message.

Might as well pack.

She got two bags from the spare bedroom closet. An overnighter and another of medium size. Both matched the larger bag, the thirty-incher she’d brought down from Harrison. The thirty-incher looked as though it had endured equal travel. Norma wondered how they achieved that. Actually it got only half the wear, because two years ago when she’d bought this set of luggage she’d done as instructed, as she knew to do from times previous: bought an extra bag in the thirty-inch size. That allowed alternately one bag to be left at Number 19 and made ready while its counterpart was away being carried.

Norma wasn’t the least indecisive about what to pack, nor did she strew things about. It seemed as though she was merely filling the bags, giving them proper weight and believable content, the way she removed things several at a time from drawers and didn’t sort through. In twenty minutes she was done. She zipped, buckled and locked both bags and placed them in the foyer along with the thirty-incher. There was only one visible difference other than size. The thirty-incher had a red and white, rather than a brown, leather identification tag attached to its handle.

She tried Drew’s number again.

His service was still answering and he hadn’t called in for messages. She decided to trust her intuition. Quickly she changed into what she’d wear on the flight. She left the luggage in the foyer, went out and took a taxi uptown to Second Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street.

There was the Roosevelt Island tramway, all orange and blue and advertising itself thirty feet above street level. A tram car was about to depart. Nevertheless, Norma, on impulse, took the time to go into one of the small shops in the mall at the base of the tram station, a place that sold only candy. She bought all the Necco wafers the store had, five packs, three chocolate, two assorted. Because recently Drew had remarked that while Godivas and Teuschers were fine, they weren’t any better to his taste than Neccos had been twenty-some years ago.

Norma ran up the steps. In contradiction to the usual city behavior, the tram’s departure was delayed especially for her, the time it took her to purchase her ticket and get aboard. Her heart was pounding from rushing. She thanked the other eight passengers and the tram operator and then they were underway, suspended from a cable, proceeding above the city, going against the taxi yellow grain of the avenues: Second, First, York. And FDR Drive, the traffic headed home in both directions, the various car colors attractive from that high vantage. Actually, everything appeared cleaner from up there, the city’s deterioration not nearly so apparent. The East River was almost as calm as a creek and closer alongside on the right the Queensboro Bridge was, as usual, being painted, splotched with orange.

From the tram on the way over Norma could also make out Drew’s apartment. His was the highest at the south end of the Roosevelt Island complex. She knew it by heart. Whenever she happened to be going up or down FDR Drive she would glance across the river to it. At night his lights on, even the bathroom light, was their signal that he was home. Then she could rest easier. Other times she believed she could sense when he was there.

As today. His door wasn’t bolted inside. She let herself in with her key.

He was where she had pictured he would be. Seated alone at the corner windows. Possibly he had noticed her walking over from the tram, although from what she understood he seldom looked down in that direction. Usually he paid attention to the river and whatever happened to be on it, or the Lilliputian animation among the highrises across the way, which were otherwise as dimensionless as a postcard.

Norma went directly to him, saved her hello until it was accómpanied by her hand lightly on his bare shoulder. She also said her name for him. Only she called him Drew, short and familiar for Andrew, which she knew he disliked. To most people he was Gainer.

He offered his face up for her kiss. There was love for her in his smile. He said: I thought I was supposed to pick you up.

You were, she said matter of fact, not wanting to break it to him right off.

He was wearing a pair of blue lightweight cotton shorts and white athletic socks, knee-high socks that were pushed down to his ankles. His legs were extended across the lap of another chair, shins layered with gauze compresses. On the floor nearby was a clear glass bowl containing an amber liquid.

Okay by you if we leave later, say around seven or eight? Otherwise we’re liable to hit some tie-ups on account of vapor locks.

She didn’t object.

Leslie called, just a few minutes ago, from Oak Bluffs.

"You should take all your calls."

He got that and agreed with a slight nod. The trouble was his phone numbers were spoiled again. He had two separate lines, with two different numbers, both unlisted. Each time he had the numbers changed it was a relief to be that abruptly out of touch with the people he’d given the number to at the spur of a promising moment. When last the numbers were changed he’d vowed to be more discreet, conscientious about it, only Norma and Leslie and a few business connections would know what to dial. But now, just four months later, he couldn’t pick up for someone he wanted to speak to because more often it would be someone he’d rather avoid. Anyway, next week when he got back from Martha’s Vineyard he’d have both numbers changed and unlisted again.

When did Leslie go up? Norma asked.

Early yesterday morning. Had herself flown. She wants us to bring some Zabar’s raisin pumpernickel and a pound of birthroot.

That’s a pretty sizable order.

She said there are a couple of holes in the screen porch that the mosquitoes are finding. She wants to use birthroot on her bites.

It would be truly Leslie, Norma thought, not to use anything for her mosquito bites until Drew got there with that carnal-sounding herb. Until then, she’d just scratch and bear it.

Norma’s attention went to the room. She hadn’t been there in three weeks. There in the corner were the Realities, six years of them next to an equally high stack of Daily Racing Forms. A forsaken shoe, a silver spike-heeled sandal, was almost out of sight beneath the couch. Three starfish from an Aruba trip were stuck like a personal constellation on one of the windowpanes. On the low table on the face of an edition of a Nabokov novel was a .32 caliber automatic. Next to a perfect dandelion pod preserved forever in a semi-sphere of clear plastic. Next to the telephones with adaptors attached by simple suction to their earpieces and wires running from them to a pair of Sony M-101 micro cassette recorders. On an alcove wall a numbered and signed Jasper Johns print was hung opposite a framed collection of counterfeit U.S. paper money.

There were enormous pine cones in a natural basket near a leg of the authentic eighteenth-century armoire. The double doors of the armoire were open to reveal a twenty-four inch Trinitron and a Betamax. On the shelves above, video tapes, bootlegged Truffauts and Loseys and Kubricks along with others, such as Misty Beethoven and Inside Marilyn Chambers. Representing not so much the quality of him but rather his scope, Norma knew.

Your plants seem to love it here, she said. He had quite a few hanging and standing around.

Because I ignore them.

She doubted that.

They’re trying to get my attention by looking good, he said.

Norma picked a withered leaf from an otherwise flourishing Ficus tree. She’d given up on Ficus. They always appeared so healthful and irresistible at the florists but became terminal as soon as she got them home.

That’s the one I swear at, Gainer claimed.

Norma felt up in under the tendrils of an obese Swedish ivy. Its soil was damp, cared-for.

Gainer removed the compresses from his shins, saturated them again by dipping them into the bowl of amber liquid. His legs were severely bruised, gashed open in places.

Norma had to look away from them.

His legs were hurt from being kicked while playing soccer. They were always hurt to some extent because he never gave them time to heal, played at least twice a week.

Soccer was his game.

He’d chosen it long ago before there were teams such as the Cosmos. When he was ten he’d gone alone on the subway to various remote city fields that usually didn’t even have any bleachers to watch German New Yorkers against Polish New Yorkers or whoever. A weekend league of amateurs that occasionally got its scores noted in the smallest type in the Daily News. A few of the older players had once been with well-known European teams. Fred Holtz was one of those Gainer especially remembered. A block of a man with badly scarred knees who, during a warmup, had shown the boy, Gainer, how to bring down and control the ball with his chest. That same afternoon Holtz had scored two goals, the second from twenty yards out to win the match. And, afterward, on the sideline, while wiping at the perspiration that was dripping even from his blond and gray hair, he had acknowledged Gainer again with his eyes. Shared some of that important moment, was the way Gainer took it and kept it.

These days, eighteen years later, Gainer frequently went over to Randall’s Island and got into a pick-up game. However, where he enjoyed playing most was in the Bronx on a field with practically all the grass run off it. The guys he played with there were Hispanics who had become used to being unemployed.

The compresses were again in place on his outstretched shins. He took notice of a blue and white private helicopter as it set down across the river on the huge red X of the Sixtieth Street Heliport. Almost immediately it lifted off and side-swooped eastward. Taking a heavyweight type to his estate on the North Shore or even more likely sent in from out there in moneyland to import some high-priced company, Gainer thought. Offhand he asked Norma, How’s Phil?

Who? As though the name was meaningless.

That Phil from Michigan.

What’s that you’re putting on your legs?

Peach pit tea.

What good does it do?

For one thing it appeases Leslie.

Norma sat in the fat armchair diagonally across from him. She smoothed her hair back with both hands.

Gainer recognized it as her look before a fib.

She told him: I haven’t heard from that Phil.

Why, do you think?

A shrug.

More than likely, Gainer thought, Phil had become discouraged after having made too many unreturned phone calls or heard too many transparent excuses. For a while earlier in the year Norma had spent some good times with the man, seemed to be reacting happily to him. Then she returned from one of her regular trips to Zurich. Changed. From then on she starved the relationship.

Phil was strange, she said ambiguously, though insinuating something a little sinister.

When recently Gainer had suggested introducing her to someone, she’d said lightly but pointedly that she’d prefer to do her own casting. Nevertheless, Gainer now told her: At Clarke’s the other day I met someone you might find interesting.

Norma was away in other thought.

Seemed a nice guy, in his forties, full partner in a law firm.

After a moment she came back, asked: What color tie was he wearing?

I didn’t notice. Why?

Norma decided. It was blue, a dark, sincere blue. Is he married?

Was.

How many times?

Once, I believe he said. Twice was more believable, Gainer now thought.

Better he should be a lawyer at lunch without a tie …

She had a point.

… and married, she added.

Why married?

Drew, honey, if there’s to be a divorce at least I should have the pleasure of being the cause of it. She couldn’t keep a straight face.

Neither could Gainer.

She remembered the Neccos, dug into her bag and got them, tossed a roll to Gainer.

He was pleased, and, as usual, exaggerated his surprise for her. With one of the candy wafers in his mouth, melting, he remarked, It’s like tasting memories.

Norma thought perhaps the mood of the moment might help soften what she had to tell him: I can’t go up to the Vineyard.

Why not?

I have to make a carry.

He lowered his head and rubbed at his brows roughly with the heel of his hand, as though to prevent having to look at something that wouldn’t go away.

There was no way out of it, Norma said.

You’ve only been back a week—

Two actually. It seemed even longer to Norma.

I thought their rule was at least a month between carries.

I reminded them of that but it didn’t matter. They seem to be in a bind of some sort.

Gainer stood abruptly. The wet compresses on his shins were disregarded as they fell to the floor. His stride across the room seemed purposeful, although all he did was get that day’s racing form from the hall table, organize its pages and place it on the top of the stack in the corner. They don’t get into binds, he said.

Darrow implied as much. He said he wanted me, particularly me, to make this carry. Someone he could surely depend on, he said.

Gainer pictured such words coming from Darrow, and Norma soaking them up, falling for the flattery. Darrow phoned you?

I drove up there.

Did you have to?

Probably not, but it was a nice day to get out of the city for a while.

No use reminding her again that she should keep her contact with Number 19 as remote as possible. Usually the carry was brought to her by an intermediary, not always the same man but always someone nameless and neutral-looking who brought the full suitcase and took away the empty. Gainer believed it was safer for Norma not to get closer to Number 19 than that, but she took it as merely his way of viewing things through his street-cautious nature. Hadn’t her years of affiliation with Number 19 proved that? She’d always been treated well by Darrow and the others, in little ways made to feel that she truly was a trusted favorite. She wished Gainer would be more tolerant of them. That would make the situation more comfortable for her. As things were, the illegal side of it was always being stressed.

Norma retrieved the compresses, dropped them into the bowl that she set aside where it wouldn’t get kicked over. Hine was there today, she said. On his best prep school behavior, as usual. I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Hine, the way Darrow talks right through him.

Going on about them as though they were ordinary people, Gainer thought.

Hine asked about you, she said.

Gainer had been to Number 19 a few times with Norma, on certain social occasions when she hadn’t wanted to go alone. He’d gone against his better judgment but reasoned that seeing who and what were there might lessen his concern.

It didn’t.

No matter how pleasant the place appeared or how polite and upright everyone acted, Gainer knew all it would take was a scratch to reveal mob.

He had also accompanied Norma on several of her carries to Zurich. For the fun of it, was the way Norma persuaded him. To experience what she was up against was more his reason for going along. He knew, of course, what that certain piece of luggage of hers contained and it amazed him how nerveless she was about it. It never seemed to cause the uneasiness it deserved nor received any evident special care. It just got conveyed and heaved and lugged to its destination along with the rest.

Now, in a tone she knew he would not doubt, she told him: I’m sorry Drew.

He shrugged and tried to smile it off but his disappointment was too thick. For weeks he’d been aiming his time to this coming Thursday—her birthday—the celebration he’d organized with Leslie’s help, the special wines, thoughtful presents, little personal touches. He wanted this birthday of Norma’s to tell her a lot for him. Now he couldn’t even reach Leslie to tell her not to bother with any of it. There wasn’t a phone at the cottage.

It was just bad timing, Norma said.

Gainer returned to her, to his chair by the window. The mood was changed from what it had been, as though someone had sprayed the air with dejection. The two of them sat there, sunk silently in it for a long moment. Do you intend to ever quit them? Gainer asked.

No reply from her. Instead, she smoothed back her hair with both hands, this time so severely that for a moment her eyes were elongated.

Gainer didn’t allow the sidestep. Do you?

I’ve mentioned it to Darrow, Norma said offhand.

When?

A while back.

But not lately.

Not lately.

What did Darrow say?

He thought it would be crazy for me to walk away from such a good thing.

In other words no.

No what?

You can’t quit.

That’s not exactly what Darrow said.

It’s what he meant.

I only mentioned the matter, didn’t press it. In fact I didn’t even put it to him in a way that called for a yes or no. If I ever really wanted to I’m sure I could quit. The choice is mine. For the time being I’d just as soon leave things be. She wasn’t rankled, said it in a normal tone.

You’re hooked on the money.

That’s for sure, she said, I’m an addict.

Gainer put two Neccos in his mouth and immediately bit down on them. Once, to do that would have been a transgression. They were supposed to be sucked on until they melted.

Drew, do you know how much I’ll clear this year? She heard his crunching the candy. Two hundred eighty thousand. For only six days’ work, if it can be called work. Two hundred eighty I get to keep. After a beat, she added, What’s more, I’ve come to enjoy Zurich.

Not cold-blooded, overmethodical Zurich, Gainer thought, all those people with adding machine eyes. What was there to enjoy?

Norma sensed his question, was tempted to tell him. Instead she moved forward in her chair, leaned to him, awkwardly gave him a hug with both arms around. His hand matched the round of the back of her head as he momentarily held it. He hoped she didn’t think he blamed her. He could never blame her for anything.

They heard his stomach growl.

Deep down anger? Norma asked lightly.

No lunch.

She got up and went into the kitchen.

His kitchen was as neat as hers, everything in place. While she was making the Brie and tomato sandwiches, she glanced out at him. From where she stood the doorway was reduced to a horizontal slit, but it allowed some of Gainer in profile. Norma thought how caring it had been of him to worry about her situation with Number 19. Although by now, after ten years of it, he should know that making carries was a safe, easy business and there was certainly no reason to be concerned about Darrow. Darrow might not be as straight as he tried to impress but he was far from being a heartless mobster.

She sliced the tomatoes as thin as possible to please her Drew.

And also, she thought, it had been sweet of him to try to get her interested in that lawyer he’d met. She’d responded a bit flip but he wouldn’t mind that. She might tell him her reason soon, would have to if ever her body and mind became convinced that it definitely wasn’t a passing thing. Which at the moment it certainly didn’t feel like.

From where Gainer sat he caught glimpses of Norma moving about in the kitchen. At times, observing her was like looking into a mirror, seeing a ten-year-older feminine version of himself. They looked that much alike. Same dark hair and hairline, same green eyes, faces identically shaped. He also had the resolute mouth and unyielding gaze and while those aspects somewhat diminished Norma’s beauty, for Gainer they were considered masculine and attractive.

The physical resemblance had come from their mother. The only photograph of her was kept by Gainer on his dresser in a recent frame. A black and white professional portrait that she had signed with love and, later, perhaps to fit another frame, had cut away nearly all her love and signature. The mother’s face in the photograph was so retouched it was as unrealistically without lines as a movie star’s publicity photo. Still, her features were there and, no doubt, sister and brother, Norma and Gainer, had mostly taken after her.

This was not, though, the extent of Norma’s and Gainer’s alikeness. Many of Gainer’s ways were masculine translations of Norma’s ways. Not to suggest he was effeminate, but some of her was apparent in his posture, his turn of head, his stride, his transitional movements from one physical attitude to another.

The similarity even carried over into the more abstract. It was often possible for them to be together, hardly exchange a word and still feel as though they’d had a long informative talk. That much affinity.

Norma and Gainer.

When she had just turned fifteen, he was about to be five. They lived on West End Avenue in a twenty story building that had the year 1923 cut into its cornerstone. Theirs was an apartment of ten rooms, most of them immense with twelve foot high ceilings and poor light. A remnant of those who determined such fashionable camps as the West Side and moved on, leaving behind prodigal ghosts, abused elegance and reduced rents.

The apartment was because the mother had wanted space, not to suffocate, she’d said. The father had held back, saying it wouldn’t be comfortable. Their largest sofa seemed a miniature of itself against the living room wall and no single rug they owned or could afford would be good and large enough to satisfy the dining room. All the hardwood floors were left bare and waxed, scattered with rugs that were constantly slipping out of place, having to be corrected.

Gainer would get a running start down the entrance hall and slide on the copy of a prayer-sized Kashan as though the floor were ice. His big bedroom was as deep into the apartment as it could be, his bed cringed in a corner and in the night his playthings searched for one another across the waxed expanse.

Gainer would put his feet up and thump on the wall, not too loudly, with his heels. Norma’s room was adjacent, her bed in the abutting corner, closer than anyone to him. She would respond, tap the wall with her fingers and help bring everything down to his size.

The father was employed by a major advertising agency as its personnel director. He had a degree in Business Administration from Colgate. At least it sounded Ivy League. The father’s office did not have a window but it was on the executive floor and vice-presidents sometimes said hello or good-bye to him by name.

Presumably it was the father’s job to assess potential employees, decide if they would do. The father took it seriously. He believed his judgment of people was an infallible litmus. True character was not always on a person’s front page but more often